- a weight shift controlled glider that looks like a triangular shaped wing, it has spars and struts and steel wires as part of its construction to maintain the aerodynamic shape.
- These aircraft have glide angle of about 8:1 up to 15:1
- Fly at speeds of approximately 20kph to about 80kph.
- Typical Stall speed - 24 kph
- Typical Min Sink speed - 40 kph
- Typical Max rough air speed - 70 kph
- Typical VNE speed - 80 kph
- Typical min sink rate - 1.2 m/s ~ 4kph
- Typical L:D - 9:1
- These aircraft easily fold down to the size of a 5 metre long by 0.4m wide cylinder and weigh 20kg to 40kg.
- The HG comes in different sizes to match the pilot weights.
- Typical weight ranges are: 60-90, 80-110, 90-130, but this will depend on the manufacturer
- The HG comes in different configurations depending on the eaze and performance of flying
- Floater -
- this is the glider that most people start with and often hang onto.
- As the name implies these are slower and more forgiving and easy to fly HGs, and it is for that reason often long time pilots will still choose to fly these wings because even though they are not performance machines they maximize the fun.
- These are the lighter of the HG wings ~ 21 kg
- The glide angle 8:1
- Intermediate
- these wings have greater performance than the floater counterpart
- still have easy handling and the serious recreational pilot often will have this as their second wing
- glide angle 10:1
- High performance - king posted
- high performance gliders are still manufactured because they can have some weight advantages
- glide angle 12:1
- Topless
- These are the competition machines
- have glide angles of 15:1
- weigh in at 35 kg